In October of this year Lord St. Vincent went to live ashore at Gibraltar, both on account of his health, and because there, being the great British naval station of the Mediterranean, he was centrally placed to receive information, to give orders, and especially to hasten, by his unflagging personal supervision, the work of supply and repair upon which the efficiency of a fleet primarily depends. The division off Cadiz, numbering generally some fifteen of the line, kept its old station watching the Spaniards, under the command of Lord Keith,—one of the most efficient and active of the generation of naval officers between St. Vincent and Nelson, to the latter of whom he was senior. Within the Mediterranean Nelson commanded, under St. Vincent. The blockade of Egypt and Malta, and co-operation with the Austrian and Neapolitan armies in the expected war, were his especial charge. He was also to further, as far as in him lay, the operations of a combined Russian and Turkish fleet, which had assembled in the Dardanelles in September, 1798, to maintain the cause of the coalition in the Levant. This fleet entered the Mediterranean in October; but instead of assuming the blockade of Alexandria and the protection of the Syrian coast, it undertook the capture of the Ionian Islands. All of these, except Corfu, fell into its power by October 10; and on the 20th Corfu, the citadel of the group, was attacked. Nelson saw this direction of the Russo-Turkish operations with disgust and suspicion. "The Porte ought to be aware," he wrote, "of the great danger at a future day of allowing the Russians to get a footing at Corfu."[225] "I was in hopes that a part of the united Turkish and Russian squadron would have gone to Egypt,—Corfu is a secondary consideration.... I have had a long conference with Kelim Effendi on the conduct likely to be pursued by the Russian Court towards the unsuspicious (I fear) and upright Turk.... A strong squadron should have been sent to Egypt to have relieved my dear friend Captain Hood; but Corfu suited Russia better."[226] At the same time Turkish troops, under the pashas whose good dispositions Bonaparte had boasted, swept away from France the former Venetian territory on the mainland, acquired by the treaty of Campo Formio.